Today, as we celebrate our parish feast
of St. Pius X, today's readings give us an opportunity to reflect on
where we are going as a parish. I don't mean some kind of field
trip, but what life is all about: Salvation, which is found through a
narrow gate.
Pope Saint Gregory the Great, speaking
of heaven, says: “No misfortune should distracts us from this
happiness and deep joy; for if anyone is anxious to reach a
destination, the roughness of the road will not make him change his
mind.” Ultimately, heaven is worth the challenge of getting there.
This past February I travelled to
Buffalo, NY, to visit a close college friend for a few days of skiing
and catching up with him. Driving over there in the winter, I was
really pleased that I had perfectly clean roads as I carried into
Ohio. However, things eventually changed after sunset. When I got
around Erie, PA, a storm brewed up and snow was coming down hard, but
the more I turned North, the crazier it got. Eventually, there were
practically no cars on the road, and I could barely see a thing.
Finally, all there was to see were my headlights, an unmarked mound
of snow with a road somewhere beneath it, and every 4-5 seconds, the
poles marking the end of the pavement on each side. Those poles were
all I had to stay on this little path and carry through to get to my
destination, and boy was I poking along and hoping things kept going
well.
“No misfortune should distracts us
from this happiness and deep joy; for if anyone is anxious to reach a
destination, the roughness of the road will not make him change his
mind.”
So in the Gospel today, we have a
negative example, someone that we should not
imitate: “Lord, will only a few be saved?” This person is
either overly curious (and we all know what happened to the cat), or
they are seeking this information for a purpose: “what is the least
amount of work I need to do?” It is like a student viciously
calculating what they have to do to get a good grade in school.
Jesus' response, then, avoids two bad
results. First, if he says “hardly anybody,” then we would all
fall into fear and forget why Jesus came to die on the Cross.
Second, if he says “mostly everybody,” we would all then be prey
to presumption, to lazily moving through life as if heaven was a
given – and there are few things that will make our love for God
fade away faster than like assuming on God's love, just as a married
couple that doesn't show affection will eventually deteriorate.
Rather, Jesus says “Strive to enter
by the narrow gate!” You yourself, stay focused! Keep your feet
moving; keep your hands on the plow; keep your nose to the
grindstone; keep your eyes on the road; keep your head in the game!
Strive! Becoming a Saint, which is
what we are all meant to be about here, means striving! And let's
not forget that this does not
mean that we are 1. self-made, or 2. entitled, another pair of
parallel traps. Saints are not self-made, as if they did it on their
own. No, getting through the narrow gate to heaven means that we
more and more allow God to re-make us, not we ourselves. Nor is it
something that we expect to come our way as we just sit around. We
have to strive.
Instead
of asking in our hearts “What is the least I can do to be saved?”
We instead follow our patron, St. Pius X, guided by his episcopal
and papal motto: instaurare
omnia in Christo.
These words, borrowed from Saint Paul and prayed every Monday evening
in the Church's Liturgy
of the Hours,
are known well to us: “renew all things in Christ.” (Eph. 1:10).
It
is in Jesus that we are sanctified. This means the Cross. This
means striving.
As
a parish family, we strive together. We stay focused together. We
allow ourselves to be renewed in Christ together, here, gathered
around this altar. May it be so every single week, and may we never
give up on the journey, because its worth it. St. Pius X, Pray for
Us.
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